The trouble which is bestowed by railway companies to cause the
restitution of lost property is incalculable. Some years ago, a young
lady lost a portmanteau from the rest of her luggage—a pardonable
oversight, for she was a bride starting on a honeymoon trip. The
bridegroom—never on such occasions an accountable being—had not noticed
the misfortune. When the loss was discovered, and application made
respecting it, the lady spoke positively of having seen it at the station
whence they started, then again at a station where they had to change
carriages; she saw it also when they left the railway; it was all safe,
she averred, at the hotel where they stopped for a few days. She was
also certain that it was among the rest of the “things” when they again
started for a watering-place; but, when they arrived there, it was
missing. It contained a new riding habit, value fifteen pounds. The
search that was instituted for this portmanteau recalled that of
Telemachus for Ulysses; the railway officials sent one of their clerks
with a _carte blanche_ to trace the bride’s journey to the end of the
last mile, till some tidings of the strayed trunk could be traced. He
went to every station, to every coach-office in connection with every
station, to every town, to every hotel, and to every lodging that the
happy couple had visited. His expenses actually amounted to fifteen
pounds. He came back without success. At length the treasure was found;
but where? At the by-station on another line, whence the bride had
started from home a maiden. Yet she had positively declared, without
doubt or reservation, that she had, “with her own eyes,” seen the trunk
on the various stages of her tour; this can only be accounted for by the
peculiar flustration of a young lady just plunged into the vortex of
matrimony. The husband paid the whole of the costs.